It certainly doesn’t look like Sweet Harmony in Prem
March 29, 2014
What better catalyst is there for a new article than fresh drama? With Highlander interest in the EU reaching higher levels (article to come out later), and Prem being a hotbed of upsets this season while we are only three weeks in! It has rejuvenated my motivation for writing gossip articles, and it’s time to recap it for the first half of the season. I apologise in advance for unintentionally upsetting any players or teams with my awful puns.
Who will divs?
I don’t think any of us could have predicted a season like this. A mere three weeks ago, these were the predictions for who would take home the €500 (and nine Tt gaming mice):
How odd that these predictions now seem almost laughable. The team that was predicted as the most likely to win was the 
The Electric Temptations, after many saw them blitz NA UGC Highlander Season 12. Many also expected 
Kill Switch to maintain their crown as the champions of EU Highlander, even with a few seemingly menial roster changes. Lastly, players expected Division 1 winners, Tourettes Chessclub to do well, after spending the past year tryharding. Let’s take a look at how it’s all changed…
Alive Switch
First of all, while it’s fresh in everyone’s minds, let’s take a look at Kill Switch, the Prem champions. After losing Viaduct to Prem debuters (and arguably the keenest team in Prem), things came to a head in a scrim vs Jamais Vu, where apparently the atmosphere turned so poor after a loss that Demoman-of-the-season nominee, 
EmilioEstevez, left and was soon followed by teammates jumping on the bandwagon. A source from the Kill Switch team told me that their recent scrims have been rage and frustration at their lack of dominance over EU Highlander, with 
Hegee and 
it's Mint being dubbed as irreplaceable in their synergy with the team, with rumours of personality clashes within the team.
After several attempts on the carcasses of the roster, with 
Candle intially backing-up for 
itsallgood and 43742340975439057043 rumoured to be following him as 
kKaltUu‘s replacement, it looks like 
pancake, leader/manager of the team since Div 6, had managed to eloquently persuade members to return:
|ks| Pancake |PB’s|: -___-
|ks| Pancake |PB’s|: idiot
|ks| Pancake |PB’s|: join up
|ks| Pancake |PB’s|: all are playing
Candle: wat
|ks| Pancake |PB’s|: u kids
|ks| Pancake |PB’s|: yes
Kudos to pancake for keeping the shitstorm short and resolving it within the space of twelve hours. Now let’s look at teams who weren’t as fortunate…
It’s All Good if we use a merc?
I previously mentioned that 43742340975439057043 was projected to join the itsallgood as main Heavy. In a few weeks, Highlander admin and Heavy kKaltUu will be having arm surgery, rendering him incapable of playing for the remainder of the season. As if their roster issues weren’t already bad enough with no rostered main demoman and taking advantage of the one free merc rule by using Steel-stacker JoeN from The Breakfast Club on Demoman. There has been dissent from more than a few players in Prem though – with voices from various teams (who shall not be named) echoing disapproval in pug channels and steam chats for what is viewed as the exploitation of vague rules, to the point of bringing the subject up to admins. Even with their roster issues, they still managed to cause the first major upset of the season in their first official vs The Electric Temptations, much to the astonishment of 
Hildreth, who had been solidly backing them up, and Kiptf2 in a BlackOut TV cast.
The Relegation Temptations
That brings us onto our next topic. Many predicted the Americans to do exceptionally well this season, to shock and awe the EU with their tactics from across the other side of the Atlantic. Perhaps it was bad luck that their first two officials were against the teams that finished third and second in Prem last season, but it has led many to question why they were put into Prem in their debut EU season. Although, I did grab a few words from Argo when asking him for a PCW:
λrgo: Um we don’t usually have a lot of time to scrim for ETF2L. UGC prep takes up most of our time. I’ll let you know if we’re ever looking though.
Mia: Ah okay
Mia: So you guys don’t invest a lot into ETF2L?
λrgo: Well we’re trying to start taking it a bit more seriously considering we lost both of our first games, but between 6s and UGC its hard to devote a ton of time to it scrim-wise. Euro times are right in the middle of our work/school day so we can pretty much only play on the weekends.
Mia: How comes you guys signed up then?
λrgo: Well we still really want to play and want to be as competitive as possible. We do our best to win our games. We just can’t devote as much time to scrimming as the Euro teams.
λrgo: But considering the amount we scrim for UGC, its not like we don’t get plenty of HL practice in. As we get more comfortable with the 200 ping and get more of our starters to show up for the matches, I think we’ll play better and better against the other Prem teams.
Perhaps they will fare better against the weaker teams in Prem for the remainder of the season, UGC is higher-valued in the NA and would be their focus, similar to how Highpander© are now focusing on ETF2L as it is the more dominant league in Europe, right?
Pandering to ETF2L
After a surprise upset during week 2 of Wireplay Highlander Season 12, in which Tourettes Chessclub overcame predictions and took Viaduct 3-2 and subsequently Croissant 2-0 over Highpander©, a week of deliberation and the realisation that they will now more likely win a questionably reliable 20-man server for their efforts in Wireplay, they decided to drop from the league.
This was not without it’s own dose of drama though. On the same evening of the Wireplay week 2 fixture, Tourettes Chessclub had consecutive officials – their Wireplay official and then their UGC official vs Steve!‘s mix team, Hentai Brotherhood. After sending ignored Steam messages to Steve!‘s Pyro, 
Scissors was astounded to discover a default match report filed against Tourettes Chessclub 25 minutes after default time, stating that Tourettes Chessclub (who were the home team for Swiftwater) did not turn up. After a prolonged dispute, both teams were ordered to play the match by an extended deadline and Hentai Brotherhood chose to give a default win to Tourettes Chessclub.
A Splendid start to the season!
Back onto ETF2L, let’s look at the second upset of the season: 
Fair Enough‘s 6-0 over 
Stacked on cp_steel.
After Season 4 champions, 
DAROUTOUTOU, dropped two days after final divisions were published, so that Awsomniac could better focus on the ongoing 6v6 season, there was a debate as to what to do. A decision was made to move a Division 1 team up, which would also resolve all the other roster disputes in a domino-effect down divisions. Now the question was, which team? PremTech put themselves forward as a replacement for DAROUTOUTOU, but kKaltUu, whose wise decision-making proved invaluable as shown in the provisional divisions this season, went forth and asked Flood if Fair Enough would be interested in the open Prem spot. After being dubbed “Prem by default” by Tuto, their defeat of Stacked strained cracks in the team that had been brewing. Post-cast, in the stream chat, TF2Centre admin and Splendid’s Heavy, Marty chose to provoke TF.TV’s 
huhystah, resulting in huhystah blaming the loss on certain members of Stacked and quoting his damage numbers. The drama proved too much for upcoming talent of the season, 
tracker, who that same night left the roster and chose to no longer participate in Highlander anymore; whilst Mista also left, to rejoin his Osmoz’ brethren in 
Team Najim in Division 1. Finding a replacement Sniper has been hard, substitute/legend rouHe has been filling in, but has declining interest in the game and is therefore unsuitable in the long run, so b33p tried his Irish luck with 
kcot when the word that Kill Switch may have been possibly folding, spread.
2legit2quit?
And now we have come full circle back to Kill Switch, and time for this article to end, with an update on Kill Switch‘s current team status since the narrowly-avoided fold:
Mia: How are kill switch doing now?
-: We’re losing to shit teams that we used to roll so much
-: We’re shit
-: Basicallly
Mia: Ah.
We’re only three weeks into the main season and EU Highlander is looking more interesting than ever. What will happen in the next few weeks? Watch this space.
Posted by SuddenlyStarMia in Highlander, League
content rss
Original VanillaTF2 article: http://www.vanillatf2.org/2014/03/it-certainly-doesnt-look-like-sweet-harmony-in-prem/
Thanks to Munkyman for helping me count votes in the who will divs thread.
Now /this/ is an article! Refreshing break from the standard.
DRAMA :o, plz #premteamsdropalreadytogetusinprem
Oh there is so much rude things I could write here, so tempted, feeling that annoyance growing like a tumor under my nails.
ill get the popcorn
draamaaaaaaa
High quality article Mia, I would be proud to have written this one. Bravo.
Thanks for the article.
Props to pancake.
We need more articles like these
Let it all out nijoonen!
Jeez Maito calm down with your desire to go prem :-D Season is (almost) midways and you’ll get your prem spot right when S7 starts. Now just sit still, eat your pizza and be patient.
“With Highlander interest in the EU reaching higher levels (article to come out later)”
Less teams signed up for this season, if you mean that we should expect more HL teams next season, then it’s cool
Calm down Maito, if HL is not going to drastically grow next season, then it’s really easy to get prem spot, i expect half of prem teams drop at the end of a season, so half of div 1 is going to replace them anyways.
I primarily meant Blackout providing a casting platform covering highlander, pop. They’ve done a fantastic job this season.
nice article !
Blackout have been casting highlander?
Reading this gave me aids, i’ll wear a condom next time
This is the stuff I like to read.
Keep it up!
Really nice!
Hey, itsallgood, I’m free to play demo and heavy ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) , try this div1/2 scrub
Also “λrgo: Well we’re trying to start taking it a bit more seriously considering we lost both of our first games, but between 6s and UGC its hard to devote a ton of time to it “,
What a shit excuse, as if they do not practise Highlander already, they are literally practising the same game, the only different is the ping, at least make your excuse a bit more believable, like, “We like to fool around since we have shit ping” or “We suffer a bit from the High ping”
Russians like me so much loves dramas. Thank you for very interesting article. Now I will go to drink a vodka with my bear and we will sing war marches with him.
rip in paris, Mista
My arms are fine :/
After this Article People should be really careful about what they Message Mia on Steam. I am really sorry but this Kind of gossip is something for the teamfortress.tv Forums and such. Putting this on the home page of etf2l.org Site embarrasses European tf2. Obviously Teams have issues but its Not the task of etf2l Nor their newswriters to openly Quote Players from Steam Chats or speculate why they do what they are doing. Its hard enough to keep Teams together it Seems, without rubbing Every but of drama into everyones Face. This isnt News and i would recommend to doublecheck if These Kind of articles should be Posted in the Future. It will eventually lead to distrust and anger towards etf2l and decreasing participation. And this cannot be the goal of etf2l.
Where is the dislike Button? :(((
actually, pretty much everything in this article is available to public. see: the forum thread of ks “fold”
19:57 – Popcorp: Kkaltuu: My arms are fine :/
19:58 – `\Sprayer ᶜʰᵉˢˢ: It’s ruskey who damaged his arms
19:58 – `\Sprayer ᶜʰᵉˢˢ: That’s why atomicus plays
Stinson – I asked people if I could put the quotes in. I removed names of people when they asked.
kKaltUu – apologies, I heard that they were thinking of getting jamal in because you had surgery – was there another reason there were rumours of replacing you or did they come from nowehere?
@Stinson, Maybe Try Not to Capitalise Every Other Letter So Its Easier To Read
I have to agree with this article here not being exactly the best place, but for different reasons, I think vanillatv is obviously suffering from lack of content and doubleposting here and on vanilla doesn’t help at all, I think these kind of fluff or gossip articles would be best left on vanillatf2 because that was the purpose of the site from the begining and it obviously is in urgent need of visits.
Capitalising random words because German Autocorrect does so on my iPod kaneco. (:
Fun read, but I agree with some people that this doesn’t belong on the frontpage of the official etf2l site. Vanillatf2 or something would be fitting, I just think etf2l should try to keep a professional facade. Still fun though lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urcqQC02YbY
As a side-note unrelated to this particular article, can we cool it with the constant posting of flags beside every single team and player? I mean look at this mess. It’s ridiculous. It ruins perfectly good writing and makes reading it unnecessarily difficult. Just let the names be clickable and link to the ETF2L profile, and if anyone really cares about the nationality they can click through and see it.
This post should not be on the front page of etf2l, keep the drama/gossip on VanillaTF2
but good read
I saw drama and was instantly happy and started looking. It took me 2 minutes and i gave up reading.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
rusinat rasahti
I liked it ;)
Also so many flags everywhere ;_;
Excellent article, loads of shit-stirring and people being upset by it shows that it worked HEHEH.
To add to this:
What a massive travesty of justice that Hegee only came third in medic poll last season, what shitlords ended up higher than him?? Synergy is bang on.
Which prem players are scared of playing JoeNUFC, a div2 demo? Come out and show yourselves! Honestly can’t see the reasoning here, since it’s Div1 teams that are presumably getting the short end of the stick. It’s ok though, I know Permzilla’s previous days as perma-mercing for Parrot Gapers will discourage him from giving in to the populists clamoring for a Joe Rule (aka Bubble Bobbler rule) for mercs. #thanksperm
itsallgood has no plans for replacing kkaltuu. It is Rudi who I am actively trying to get rid of.
Hentai Brotherhood had 8 people on a server ready to play for UGC, only missing big bad Steve…who was in the official against Chess. Pathetic capitulation on our leader’s part, giving the default to them. Also, don’t forget that Highpander left the server 20 minutes into the Croissant game 8)
The Americans have just been disorganised so far, whether by circumstance or lack of desire I don’t know. The team that played in the Tip of the Hats showmatch did well against a strengthened Highpander, so they need to actually commit if they don’t want to spoil it for later yankees. Will another team be allowed into prem next season without any screen shots?
P.S. I had a dozen messages from Hildreth at 3am last night crying about his intense love for LazyBear and Inso; hands off, creep, they’re mine.
Freakie is better than mint :^)
I really liked the way this article was made, gj Mia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U0H2ClOXY4
The itsallgood secret to prem:
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3278925987707604134/9D5B8CBD97A793FA36F44083923691363A592B6A/
fu Bulow
^ Literally every game with Rudi and LazyBear.
If you want a good article atleast quote people right ;)
“They should rename the team to “Prem by Default”
Haha nah it’s cool to see them in, will be interesting to see how they will do.”
It’s okay though you’re still learning
nice article but i really don’t think etf2l new posts are the place for gossip.
just cause the americans have their gossip topics doesnt mean we should.. this is only interesting to people who know the players it concerns anyway, and those people already know all the gossip
This was a fun read, but honestly this kind of gossip does not belong on the front page of ETF2L.
Highlander stuff man.
I feel like this article is not appropriate for etf2l.
I will start to check out vanillatv again, though.
“Post-cast, in the stream chat, TF2Centre admin and Splendid’s Heavy, Denmark Marty chose to provoke TF.TV’s Lithuania huhy, resulting in Lithuania huhy blaming the loss on certain members of Ireland Stacked and quoting his damage numbers.”
MOOOOOM!! IM ON THE TF2 NEWS!!!
also it’s TF2Center not TF2Centre you ignorant british plebs
[…] enough to appease their appetites until the HL Nations Cup, for reference purposes, I wrote a marginally controversial article three months ago (which I would shamelessly implore you to read alongside an article that I was […]